Letter of proposal | appeal to big beach garbage brands to actively solve plastic packaging pollution.

In recent years, plastic waste pollution, especially the pollution caused by excessive consumption of disposable plastic products, has rapidly attracted global attention, and its hidden human health risks are also worrying.

As a mass production and use of disposable plastic packaging, fast consumer enterprises play a very important role in solving the problem of plastic pollution.

According to the 2018 Beach garbage Brand Monitoring report released by the environmental group Shanghai Rendu Ocean Public Welfare Development Center (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Rendu") on the International Beach Clean Day on September 21, 2019, of the 2504 pieces of garbage found in 24 beach monitoring sites that can identify their brands, a total of 1072 brands were recorded.

Among them, the number of food brands is the largest, with 317, followed by 225 alcoholic beverages and 115 daily necessities.

According to statistics, the top 10 brands with the most garbage are: master Kang, Wa, Yibao, Nongfu Mountain Spring, Coca-Cola, Unification, Yili, Wangwang, Jingtian, Mengniu. The monitoring results of the brands on the list in 2018 are basically the same as those in 2017, except that Jingtian did not make the top 10 list in the 2017 report.

We call on these identified beach garbage brands to actively shoulder the responsibility of solving the problem of environmental pollution and take action to prevent and reduce plastic pollution as soon as possible.

Data from: Rendu, Shanghai.

one.

Avoid artificial littering or improve recycling.

Neither.

The fundamental solution to the problem of out-of-control plastic waste.

According to research, nearly 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been made in the world by 2015, of which 6.3 billion tons have become garbage.

Of this plastic waste, only 9% is recycled, 12% is incinerated, and the rest is disposed of by landfills or into the environment, and plastic production is expected to increase by more than 40% over the next 10 years.

At a time when global plastic production is rising sharply, but the recovery rate has not increased, 3 if the solution is still focused on the generation of garbage, such as avoiding artificial littering and improving plastic recycling, instead of curbing the production of disposable plastic products from the source, it will be difficult to fundamentally solve the plastic pollution catastrophe.

From the types of garbage collected by the beach purification activities carried out by "Rendu" in Shanghai over the years, about 80% of the garbage is non-recyclable plastic waste, such as plastic bags, plastic film and broken styrofoam plastic packages. even in a controllable waste management system, this waste will be classified as "other waste" for landfill or incineration.

The extensive use of non-recyclable disposable plastic packaging will not only accelerate resource consumption, but also aggravate the problem of environmental pollution.

Therefore, we call on relevant enterprises and government departments to reduce the production and use of disposable plastic products as the primary consideration to solve the problem of plastic pollution.

two.

Appeal to fast-consuming enterprises.

Give priority to information disclosure and source reduction.

We appeal to the fast-consumer enterprises that consume a lot of disposable plastic packaging, especially the large enterprises that rank high in the monitoring results of out-of-control garbage brands, in product design, we should consider the environmental impact of products and their packaging in the whole life cycle, provide sustainable product delivery methods, and avoid or reduce the use of problematic and unnecessary disposable plastic packaging.

Specifically, we call on enterprises to do:

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1.

Regard disposable plastic reduction as the primary goal for enterprises to solve the problem of plastic pollution, formulate quantifiable plastic reduction targets and timetables, and disclose information such as enterprises' plastic reduction plans, plastic consumption and recycling to the public. in particular, listed enterprises should actively disclose the information of their environmental protection responsibilities, so that the society can supervise the pollution control of enterprises.

two。.

The production and use of problematic plastic packaging, such as polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene plastics, should be avoided, as these plastics contain harmful substances, have a higher risk of pollution and low recycling value, and should also avoid the production and use of small plastic packaging / supplies that are not conducive to recycling, such as food in small packages or toiletries, straws, etc., because of their small size, they are not easy to be recycled and easily lost to the environment.

3.

We should actively invest in the development of reusable packaging or redesign new product delivery models to replace the product delivery models that rely on disposable plastic packaging and provide consumers with sustainable product packaging models.

4.

Under the circumstances that it is unavoidable to use disposable plastic products, enterprises should actively improve plastic recycling, participate in the establishment of domestic producer responsibility extension system, and actively improve the resource recovery system with relevant government departments and all sectors of society.

5.

Be cautious about using biodegradable plastics as a solution: first, biodegradable plastic products are still disposable products, and the consumption of a large number of disposable products will lead to accelerated resource consumption.

Second, at present, it has not been realized that biodegradable plastics can be classified and treated in cities and towns. The promotion of biodegradable plastics in the market may not only affect the recovery quality of traditional plastics, but also difficult to ensure the complete degradation of this material.

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We will continue to urge FMCG enterprises that rely on large amounts of disposable plastic packaging to take change actions to change the current product delivery model at the cost of serious harm to the environment and health, and to provide consumers with sustainable production and consumption patterns. lead green consumption and work together to curb the continued spread of plastic pollution.